


To love is to destroy

by Kangoo



Series: Miscellaneous Warcraft Stuff [10]
Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Grief/Mourning, Loss of Control, M/M, Temporary Character Death, roaring rampage of revenge, who dies and who destroys a city in grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 05:15:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12904875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo
Summary: The battle will be carved into the minds of all those fighting here, but none will ever talk about it; if asked, they will speak of fire and screams and the visceral terror of waking horros that are better left sleeping, and they will not shiver but it will be a close thing.





	To love is to destroy

**Author's Note:**

> _“To love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed.”_  
>  ― Cassandra Clare, City of Bones

Illidan faces Maiev’s forces with Kael’thas at his side.

 

It changes nothing.

 

Well, maybe it does. It’s notably harder to vanquish the demon hunter when every hit, every spell is met by an arcane shield or Kael’thas blade; the two fight like one, always one step ahead of their enemies as they move around wings and fireballs with an ease that spokes of many battles fought side by side.

 

But there is only so much two fighters can do, no matter how formidable. They slip; they stumble; slowly, they are worn down by a conflict with no respite in sight. Whenever they strike a soldier down another takes their place, whereas they only have each other to rely on. This, in the end, is their undoing — not the disadvantage of their number, but their reliance on each other.

 

Because exhaustion makes them reckless, makes them prone to taking risks, because in their desperate efforts to save each other they show a weakness that Maiev won’t hesitate to take advantage of.

 

“Target Kael’thas first,” She tells the group of mages to her left, the metallic echo of her helmet hiding the faint disgust their art inspires her. “Give it everything you have — without him, Illidan will be defenseless.”

 

Earlier in the battle she would be wrong, but now, as her two adversaries at starting to feel the drain of such a drawn-out fight, her plan is sound. Misinformed, but only in semantics: it’s not that Illidan can’t face all of them alone, it’s that he _won’t._

 

Magic crackles at the mages fingers as they intone together a spell sure to destroy the obstacle that Kael’thas represents. His death is sure to anger the blood elves, but she doesn’t care about those things. The only thing she sees is the fulfilling of her quest: killing Illidan once and for all.

 

A crack in their defense, a slight opening in their battle dance— there. The mages were all trained by the battlefield as much as they were trained _for_ it, and they see the opportunity at the same time as she does. The spell goes in a flash of light, too bright to describe in colors— she can feel its warmth on her skin even through her armor. Without, it must be scorching hot.

 

Kael’thas sees it too late to summon a shield, and he can only look with grim acceptance as the magical flames surge toward him. At least, he thinks, he dies fighting: there are worse ways to go. It’s not quite peace, the way he is ready to meet his fate, but it’s close enough.

 

Of course the spell doesn’t hit him. That would be too easy, now, wouldn’t it?

 

No, instead, Illidan turns his head just in time— maybe he feels the heat, the arcane energy, maybe he wonders why Kael’thas wasn’t where he expected him to be just then. Whatever the case, he sees the spell and Illidan, perhaps for the first time since he saw the rampage of the Legion and swore to take it down, doesn’t think it through. He doesn’t plan, doesn’t wonder what the consequences will be— no, he reacts on pure instincts and flings himself forward, putting himself between Kael’thas and everyone else.

 

The spell collides with his back in a flash of too-bright fire before Kael’thas has the time to swear. 

 

(It’s a little known fact that Kael’thas, when stressed, swear like a sailor: it’s an habit he got from Rommath and it definitely hasn’t gotten better with his time passed amongst orcs and demon hunters.)

 

Great, dark wings curl around him as the flames roar around them, and all Kael’thas can feel is their faint warmth through his strange shelter and Illidan’s arms around his shoulders. Some part of him notes every detail, every wound smearing hot blood on his skin, as it does each time Illidan touches him— as if it were the last time he ever would.

 

This time, it might.

 

The last of the fire dissipates into shimmering smoke and, ever so slowly, Illidan lets his wings fall, but it’s less of a conscious thought than a slow fall forward, and Kael’thas wounds his arms around Illidan’s chest to keep him upright. Smaller as he is, it’s mostly useless: Illidan falls to his knees, and Kael’thas now bears most of his weight as he seems to lose the strenght to do so himself. His hands rests on something wet and still hot— blood, raw flesh, what might be bare bones at the tip of his fingers. This is not the kind of wound you recover from, not even for a demon hunter as formidable as Illidan Stormrage.

 

Illidan flinches at the touch. Kael’thas shushes him soothingly and lets what little healing magic he knows imbues his hands. It’s useless, and he’s well are of it, but Illidan nonetheless relaxes slightly in his hold.

 

“Why?” He asks, too low for any of the stunnen warriors to hear. “Your plans, the Legion— why me? Why now?”

 

Illidan looks at Kael’thas, too calm and too peaceful for someone so fierce, usually a breath away from feral. He smirks despite the fel-green blood that runs down his chin and says, not quite an answer, “Don’t worry, Kael. It’ll be alright.”

 

He repeats it— _don’t worry, it’s alright, please, don’t cry_ , in a voice so low it’s a whisper, his clawed fingers trailing lightly down Kael’thas face and leaving a smudge of dark green blood there. It’s the only thing he says, as if it were Kael’thas who was in need of reassurance, until he runs out of breath to say it and his eyes dim.

 

Kael’thas’s hands curl where they rest on his shoulders. His fingers dig into Illidan’s skin, blood already drying under his nails. For a long moment, he doesn’t move.

 

By then the soldiers have had all the time in the world to wonder what happened, as well as to decide that Kael’thas would be better taken alive— something the few blood elves scattered through the band of adventurers strongly advocated for. 

 

They expect him to come quietly. They expect him to cry. They don’t know what they expect, only that it isn’t what they get.

 

Kael’thas gently rests Illidan on the scorched ground before he rises. There’s blood on his face, on his tongue, dripping down his chin, green and red war paint circling his burning eyes. Felo’melorn glows golden-red in his hand.

 

The blood elves stop, take a step back as one; a few of them have fought at his side before, and they fear this look more than the Legion itself.

 

(There’s a common thing between all natural disaster — they are greater than themselves, announced by the way things bend around their coming. The sea retreats in front of a tidal wave; the wind stops before a thunderstorm. For a second, everything is still: this, more than anything, should have warned them.)

 

He doesn’t say a word — there is no warning, except the slight itch in his breathing, the twitch of his bloody fingers.

 

But suddenly flames surround them, the roar deafening, scorching heat that reduces a champion to ashes before he can take a step away from the edge of the battlefield. Hell awakes and Kael’thas stands at its heart, embers trailing in his steps, blood dripping from his fingers. It dissipates as it its the ground, hissing like water on a hot pan.

 

(The Sunstrider dynasty has chosen a phoenix as emblem — it is no mere coincidence. Few things burn hotter than they do, and none in quite the same destructive fashion.)

 

The flames cast his shadow on the smoke in wavering edges and sharp corners, a crown of molten gold upon his brow and blade sharper than the shards of his broken heart. Things like him shouldn’t grieve; they are, after all, the kind who take the world down with them, fire and ash and the acrid taste of burning flesh.

 

They didn’t know that but it doesn’t matter. Knowledge couldn’t have saved them; nothing will.

 

They killed Illidan and Kael’thas Sunstrider stands above his body, burning in the way only volcanoes burn  — smoke and ashes and fire, burning your breath out of the cage of your charred ribs.

 

(The battle will be carved into the minds of all those fighting here, but none will ever talk about it; if asked, they will speak of fire and screams and the visceral terror of waking horros that are better left sleeping, and they will not shiver but it will be a close thing.)

 

 

They don’t kill him, but it’s not a mercy. 

 

The only thing keeping him upright is the instinctual knowledge that he’ll die if he falls, and it’s the only thing he can understand through the rage. If he stops, he dies, and then Illidan’s sacrifice will have been for nothing.

 

His robes snaps around him, blacked and torn; the air smells of copper and sulfur; when he breathes in, one of his ribs dig into his lung, and the roar of his flames cannot entirely hide the way his chest rattles like a bone chimes. He’s on his last leg and they know it, those few soldiers still alive and figthing more for their lives than the fate of their world. 

 

Deep down, at the heart of the inferno, the only thing he remembers are a few words carried on a dying breat.

 

_Don’t worry. It will be alright. Please don’t cry_. He lost himself except for those words, and he clings to them like a lifeline.

 

This, in the end, is his undoing.

 

Maiev doesn’t quite manage to dodge his sword and the tip of the blade catch her helmet, leaving a long, bloody trail on its path. It goes flying, rolling on the crumbling floor until it hits a body and stops. Immediately, Kael’thas’s eyes are drawn to her; the source of the hatred burning like kindling in his chest.

 

Here, he is a beast; a wild thing, carried forward by a remembered voice and little else. Pushed beyond his limits, he knows — better than he knows his own name, now — that he won’t last much longer, and the part of him that rages and rampages throw him toward the warden like a storm of gold and fire, sword shining barely brighter than his eyes.

 

That’s the opening they were waiting for. Maiev dodges; she’s faster, less tired — although not by much — and he crashes in the empty space she left. The remaining soldiers jump on him, ready a the killing blow that they hold off for one inexplicable, breathless second.

 

Kael’thas looks oddly small, bloodied and ragged, panting on the ground with his fingers curled like claws in a puddle of Maiev’s blood. He turns toward them, teeth barred like he’s still bigger than himself, but his arms aren’t strong enough to bear his weight anymore and he falls to the ground, too weak to do much more than growl.

 

Maiev wants to kill him on the spot; stab him in the heart and be done with the whole thing once and for all. She should; no one would blame her for it. But blood elves are loyal to the death, even to those who would harm them; they drag their surviving companions to their feet, bloodied and beaten, and then Kael’thas as well. He doesn’t fight them. The fight has gone out of his eyes, nothing remaining of his previous rage but smoke and slow-burning flames scattered on the dark stone. He blinks slowly, face expressionless, and only moves to keep Illidan’s body in his sight — but even then, his movements are weak, and he simply goes limp in their hold when they drag him away from it.

 

Many died on that day. Whether Kael’thas is one of them is anyone’s guess.

 

 

\--

 

 

Some would have him hanged. Some want the Alliance to judge him, or the people of Silvermoon — no one wants to be responsible for his acts or those of his master, but all want the right to put him on trial for whichever crimes they accuse him of.

 

The Kirin Tor want to judge him as one of their; Maiev doesn’t trust them to punish him as she see fit; the Silvermoon triumvirate fears either one would give their prince the death penalty, despite the fact that the Sunstrider are supposed to live and die for and by their people and no one else. 

 

They reach a compromise, eventually. Kael’thas is sent under Silvermoon, deep under their streets, and locked in a cell designed by the Kirin Tor — there is so much magic in his chains alone it burns his skin. Two of Maiev’s wardens guard the doors; their sight is the only thing that can drag a reaction out of their prisoner, although it is only the faint sharpening of his gaze as he follows their movements until they disappear from view.

 

Apart from that, nothing. He isn’t peaceful as much as he’s devoid of anything beyond sheer apathy, as if he was only alive in body and not in mind.

 

He sits crosslegged in the middle of  the circular stone chamber that is his cell, his shackled hands resting between his legs, his dim eyes lost in the distance. There is nothing dignified or noble about the way he acts, no trace of his royalty. His shoulders are low, his head bent, his once-bright golden hair fall over his face. He barely eats or sleeps: like this, he is more alike to a ghost than a prisoner and, were he in any other state, he would be horrified by himself.

 

It’s as if Illidan’s death had broken something in him. Rommath brings him books and scrolls, anything that could interest him, bring back some kind of light to his features, but they pile up next to the doors, collecting dust. When he and Lor’themar manage to coax words out of him, Kael’thas sounds hollow and tired, and his answers are few and far in-between.

 

Sylvanas comes to visit, sometimes, mostly to rant about how pathetic he looks and how awful everything is. She appears more irate each time, perhaps annoyed at his lack of reaction. He barely looks at her when she comes, uncaring of the familiar disdain and annoyance in her eyes, and never replies to her biting comments like he used to.

 

“Don’t you have better things to do than mope?” She aks, the fourth of fifth time, curling her lips in distaste.

 

He shrugs. It’s more than she usually gets, but it doesn’t seem to satisfy her.

 

He thinks she enjoys his silence, a bit, if only because it gives her a reason to rant at lenght about how little she likes the idea of making peace with the Alliance. 

 

“The Alliance has taken everything from me,” He explains to Lor’themar when the regent asks him about the ceasefire, in this odd way of his, slow and devoid of feelings, although he does make a small pause before saying _everything_ , as if he wants to put emphasis on the word but doesn’t find the will in himself to do so. “Yet I cannot find it in myself to hate them for it.”

 

He doesn’t say anything else, but Lor’themar hears it as: _do what you must_. So he shakes Varian’s hand, and doesn’t ask Malfurion why he isn’t the one grieving for his fallen brother.

 

\--

And then, one day, Lor’themar says ‘enough’. He has watched his friend fade away for years now. No more. 

 

To hell with the wardens, the mages, the factions, whoever thought this was a kinder fate than death. He opens the door and says, “Come with me.”

 

Kael’thas doesn’t argue. He hasn’t uttered a word in weeks; his grief has only worsened with time, the loss still a raw wound after a decade in the dark. All he does is hold up his hands, for Lor’themar to free or take to help him stand. He does both.

 

They make their way through the twisting corridors of the castle in silence and Lor’themar doesn’t stop once to reconsider his plan. He marches forward, nods to Rommath, and drags Kael’thas through the portal the achmage summoned without thinking, because this— this spectre, this empty shell of a man — isn’t the prince he has served for so long, isn’t the friend he has fought with.

 

There is no fire to fear there, nothing of the threat Maiev painted him at. All he is is nothing but a whispered voice in a dark cell that says, _I miss him_ , and hollow eyes that can’t even cry anymore.

 

So he has no qualms manhandling Kael’thas through a rather rough teleportation that takes them Light-knows-where. The destination doesn’t matter all that much and, for all he knows, it might as well be Stormwind or Argus, for the difference it makes.

 

(Either way, inhabitants want Kael’thas’s head on a plate; just not enough to cut it themselves.)

 

 

Maybe it’s the familiar magic running over his skin that wakes him enough to look around, or maybe it’s some distant knowledge, some primal instinct that tells him to look up. Kael’thas, whatever his reason may be, lets his head tilts sideways, enough that the strands of hair that usually shadow his face fall out of his eyes.

 

Green meets green as, not too far away that he should have been able to feel him were he in any other state, Illidan meets his gaze.

 

For a moment, neither of them moves. 

 

Then the silence snaps like a rubber band stretched thin, and both surge forward without a glance at those assemble around them.

 

They meet somewhere halfway, Illidan’s arms curling around Kael’thas too-thin frame as he lets himself falls forward and into the hold. Kael’thas lets his shackled hands fall between them and rests his forehead in the crook between Illidan’s neck and shoulder, feeling like he’s been holding his breath for a decade and, finally, has breatherdout.

 

“It’s okay,” Illidan whispers next to his hear, grinning almost despite himself. “I’m back.”

 

“I’ve missed you,” Kael’thas replies, and his smile echoes Illidan’s own. 

 

Embers swirl around their feet as, deep in his chest, fire burns once again.


End file.
